Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with President Donald Trump’s envoy, Gen. Keith Kellogg, in Kyiv on Thursday. During the meeting, Zelensky offered his condolences for the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
“I expressed condolences to the American people over the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk and thanked President Trump for his condolences and response to the brutal murder of Ukrainian citizen Iryna Zarutska in North Carolina. It is important that justice prevail every time violence seeks to take hold,” Zelensky said in his account of the meeting.
Iryna Zarutska was the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was savagely murdered by a man law enforcement later identified as career criminal Decarlos Brown Jr., on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 22, with security cameras rolling and numerous bystanders doing nothing to help her.
Democrat party media suppressed the story until conservative commentators and citizen journalists made the horrifying video famous, shaming the media into covering Zarutska’s murder. President Trump joined that effort last week with a White House video in which he held up photos of both killer and victim, repeated their names, and blamed soft-on-crime Democrat policies for keeping Brown on the streets after 14 arrests.
On Wednesday, President Trump called for Brown to face the death penalty.
“The ANIMAL who so violently killed the beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety, should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) Trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY. There can be no other option!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Zelensky’s wholehearted approval of Trump’s handling of the Zarutska slaying does not appear to align with some of his most influential media supporters in Ukraine.
The Kyiv Independent, which claims to be the “fastest-growing English-language media outlet” in Ukraine, ran a story on September 9 that accused “right-wing figures across the U.S. and Europe” of cynically “weaponizing” Zarutska’s murder to “push racist, xenophobic policies at home.”
WATCH — Law Enforcement Must Investigate the Left After Charlie Kirk’s Assassination:
The Kyiv Independent’s hit piece explicitly included President Trump in that condemnation, accusing him of exploiting Iryna Zarutska to push his tough-on-crime policies, including public safety in cities like Washington, DC, and immigration enforcement.
Another “right-wing figure” harshly criticized by the Kyiv Independent was Charlie Kirk:
U.S. right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, who has called for the recognition of Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and blamed U.S. leadership for “turning Putin into an enemy,” is among those pushing the notion that Zarutska’s murder is somehow receiving less media attention because her killer is Black.
Kirk’s last social media posts before his assassination concerned Iryna Zarutska.
“If we want things to change, it’s 100% necessary to politicize the senseless murder of Iryna Zarutska because it was politics that allowed a savage monster with 14 priors to be free on the streets to kill her,” Kirk wrote Wednesday.
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